


Broken Finnish

by islasands



Series: Lambski [71]
Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: Connections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 03:19:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islasands/pseuds/islasands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sauli has made many adjustments to living in a new country and speaking a language that is not his own. While Adam is aware of and grateful for this fact, in much of his everyday life he cannot help but take it for granted. </p><p>The song is "Puhu äänellä jonka kuulen", by Happoradio (2008) - "Speak with the voice I hear"</p><p>"Olen yksinkertainen, aina selitystä vailla<br/>Sinä kartta monimutkainen, matka vierahilla mailla"</p><p>"I'm simple, always without explanation<br/>You are a complex map, a journey in a foreign land"</p><p>I'm not sure whether the story fits the length of the song, but the two go together and for the purposes of this story it won't really matter if the story ends in silence..</p><p>Please feel free to comment or critique.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Finnish

"Puhu äänellä jonka kuulen"

 

Happoradio

 

  


 

 

He walked for no reason other than to be moving. He needed to feel the impartial touch of air on his face. He needed to feel the ground beneath him, receiving but not recording his footprints. He looked up briefly. The evening sky was so infinitely sheer it made the idea of space seem improbable. He fingered the piece of paper in his pocket and simultaneously hunched his shoulders as though bracing himself. It wasn’t cold enough to require hugging his own warmth but he wished it was. He wished it was snowing and he was on his way home in its steady fall. 

_His dog would be running ahead to meet up with another dog. He and the other owner would exchange pleasantries and the dogs would play fight. When they got home he would brush the snow off his jacket and hood, and then kneel down to brush it off the back of his dog. They would burst into the warmth and light of the house, hungry for food and for mindless horseplay, their bodies full of the muscular energy pertaining to being in temperatures close to zero. Later he would lie on his bed and fall asleep on his back, one arm thrown behind his head. The dog would sleep too. Outside his window the lawns of summer would be hibernating beneath their cold covers and the trees too would be calmly shouldering their burden of snow. Above the roof tops the night sky would be shivering with stars. His sleep would be dreamless, his brow and cheeks as smooth and empty of cares as the townscape appeared when it had been swept clean by a fresh fall of snow. But the dog’s ears and eyebrows would twitch. He would still be running beside his master._

He began climbing a steep hill that led to a ridge where there was grassy area set aside for viewing the valley below. He took his hands out of his pockets and bent his head to the task. The cold laid its hand on the back of his neck. 

_“I don’t want this,” he had said, impatiently waving the piece of paper at Adam. “Too many words, too many explanations. I don’t know how you do it.”_

_“It’s how I feel, for fucks sake. I’m trying. At least I’m doing that. I_ am _trying.”_

He attained the top of the hill and paused to catch his breath. The curving narrow road that ran along the ridge was lined with trees. He remembered his boyhood pleasure in pathways. Regardless of how they had come to pass, once made they belonged to themselves and did not need the footsteps of humans or animals to remind them of their direction. They simply went the way they went. And he did too. And so did the stream that ran through the wasteland where he and his friends used to play. Life itself took place in an indivisible flow of fallible certainty. Things were the same that were never the same. The water running over the stones was always new, as was the rain, snow, or sunshine. Life ran over his body and into his eyes and ears and lips and the pores of his skin as though he was standing in its way and it was hurrying to nowhere in particular and he understood that motion. Instinctively, he understood it. It was the same reason that he ran down hills until his own speed tripped him up and he rolled in the grass and landed on his stomach and the big black head of his dog nuzzled at his neck and barked in his ear.

_“We need to talk.”_

_“_ You _need to talk.”_

_“Yes, I do. I can’t do this shutting down business. I don’t know where you're at. I don’t know what you’re thinking. I feel like I’m losing you and you won’t talk.”_

_“What do you want to know? Tell me, and I will fetch the answer the for you. Like a stick.”_

_“You can be a cynical fucker when you like.”_

He came to the cleared area where there was a gap in the trees and a park bench for viewing the vista of the valley, and beyond the hill a glimpse of the city which was already lit up for the approaching night. He sat down and crossed his arms and legs. He stared at the view. He watched a troop of gulls flying in the sky above the opposite hill. They were flying in a formation that resembled the outline of a bird in flight. Behind him he heard the arrival of a car. A door slammed. Sauli closed his eyes. 

Adam came and stood at the end of the bench. The evening sky had begun to blush in the west. The blue of it was so without substance it hardly seemed to be a color at all. He looked at Sauli. He looked so small and determinedly alone. His hands, spread on his thighs, had a look of patient resignation. His gaze, when he turned it upon Adam, bore the same calm weariness. Sauli patted the seat and he went and sat down. They sat silently upright and inspected the dying of the day. The blue was deepening in the east. The city lights were beginning to sparkle. The hillside opposite was drawing the night out of its earth and releasing it into the trees. A bird cried out and clattered in the undergrowth nearby. 

There was a pleasant intimacy in sitting together in the great outdoors and for a moment Adam wondered if an endearment would be appropriate, but then he remembered the distance inside their proximity and it hurt his feelings. He coud feel words gathering at the back of his throat and opened his mouth but at the very last moment instead of speaking he sighed. It was a heartfelt sigh of relinquishment. His sentences drifted away on the small exertion of his breath and dissipated in the cool breadth of the dawning night. He sighed again, realizing it was no great loss. He relaxed into the here and now of having nothing to say. The fact of Sauli’s presence pressing against his arm was comfortingly ordinary, no different to the ground beneath his feet, or the air he was breathing. He moved away slightly so that he could place his arm around Sauli’s shoulder and Sauli slowly leaned his head on him. The possessiveness of language rose up in his mind again but he resisted its impulse. He looked at the distance ahead of him and waited for the voices in his head to subside. He felt something in his chest turn around three times and then lie down. 

He sat still and let his body speak for him. It sat quietly, its arm around his loved one, its strength at ease, its senses as quietly and attentively preoccupied with nothing as the the atmosphere of the sky. He suddenly, unexpectedly, felt the river of life flowing over and through them, running like a river to a sea that was far, far away. Sauli reached up and kissed his cold cheek. 

“You are speaking to me in broken Finnish, my love,” he said at length and Adam squeezed his shoulder. 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
